Stage Presence
by 00010111
Summary: Twenty facts about Maureen Johnson that the world at large doesn’t know. [I don't own RENT.]


**Stage Presence **  
_twenty facts about Maureen Johnson that the world at large doesn't know _

**i.** When she was five, she got bubble gum so entangled in her hair that her mother, in an irritated rush, took scissors to it and gave her daughter a bob cut. Maureen wore a hat for four months until it grew back and refused to cut her hair shorter than shoulder length since.

**ii.** During her junior year of high school, in a strange urge to please her parents, Maureen became an honors student. Then her parents got divorced, and she stopped caring. She failed three classes the next semester.

**iii.** Her grandmother used let Maureen sit in her lap when she was sad or sick, and would rock the young girl to sleep. The habit rubbed off on Maureen, who rocked Mimi to sleep the night after Roger died.

**iv.** She met Mark Cohen at a community park on the corner of Birch and Wilson when she was seven. She had just lost her front teeth and he teased her for it. She shoved him face first into the sandbox.

**v.** Amanda Cohen, Mark's mother, knocked on the Johnson family's front door the following evening, demanding that the parents of the little girl who had shoved her son the previous day pay for his broken glasses. Mark looked miserable, but when Maureen peeked out from behind her father's leg, he smiled at her. She never forgot him.

**vi.** She had her first kiss with her best friend Thomas Collins at fifteen in a strange teenage experiment to test if he was gay or not. She was always a bit disappointed that he was, but she would never tell him. Thus, she went solo to the Sadie Hawkins dance that year.

**vii.** Maureen met Roger Davis during her first detention. She was there because she had yelled down her math teacher for wearing a fur coat. He was there because he had been caught shooting up behind the bleachers on the football field. From day one, she never understood him.

**viii.** When Maureen was ten, her little sister Emily was born. She was a quiet baby with a head full of curly hair, which Collins referred to as a Jew-fro. Emily died when Maureen was thirteen from complications during a routine tonsil removal. Because of this she resolved to become a nurse. She went to medical school until she couldn't afford it anymore.

**ix.** Maureen valued loyalty above everything else. This was the main reason she claimed to hate Benjamin Coffin III. She didn't really hate him; she just didn't understand how someone could turn his back on his friends so easily when she clung to her own so desperately.

**x.** The morning after Angel's funeral, she wandered around Alphabet City until she found another street drummer. Walking up to him, she opened her wallet and emptied its contents on the startled teen's pickle tub. It wasn't much, but the look on the performer's face made her feel somewhat validated as she made her way to Joanne's apartment.

**xi.** She always loved Mark Cohen, and much as he never got over her, she never really got over him. She didn't completely understand what it was that made her leave him, but, as much as she loved Joanne, she couldn't help but feel low for making him hurt like that.

**xii.** When she was nervous, she had a habit of grinding her teeth together so loud that everyone else in the room could hear. Everyone - her mother, Mark, her dentist, Collins, even her lab partner in high school - had told her to stop more than once, but she never listened. Joanne asked her with a kiss and a "please honeybear". Maureen now taps random beats with her forefinger on her thigh when she's on edge.

**xiii.** The one thing she is afraid of is water. Her Uncle Paul took her ice skating at Lake Winston when she was ten and she fell through the ice. Luckily, her uncle saw her fall through and was able to get to her in time, but Maureen hasn't been swimming since. The only time she ever punched Tom was when he jokingly gave her a nudge into the community pool.

**xiv.** Maureen's favorite movie as a child was MGM's The Wizard of Oz. The Witch gave her nightmares and Somewhere Over the Rainbow gave her a reason to dream.

**xv.** She met Joanne Jefferson in a bar in the lower east side. The latter was drowning her sorrows over a breakup and the former was serving the drinks. Joanne downed shot after shot until she tried to rise from her seat at closing time. She stumbled and Maureen caught her. With a nod and drunken smile in response, Maureen helped the lawyer upright and walked Joanne back to her apartment. Then she went home to Mark.

**xvi.** When Collins' T-Cells began to get dangerously low, Maureen found a job as a waitress at an Italian restaurant and threw herself into her work. Everyone thought it was because she didn't want to watch her best friend die, but when asked she said that she only wanted to give him the funeral he deserved and a head stone next to Angel's.

**xvii.** She never was very religious, but after Collins died it was not uncommon to find her sitting silently in the back of a synagogue, head bowed, listening to the rabbi nattering in Hebrew. It gave her a sense of peace. It was something regular and orderly to help her piece her life back together.

**xviii.** Maureen was loud and eccentric and a drama queen, but underneath it all, she was just afraid of being forgotten, afraid of blending in with the monotony of everyday life. As life went on, she quieted down, realizing that the people she yearned to be remembered by would never forget.

**xix.** It wasn't commitment she was afraid of when it came to Joanne, it was something else entirely. Her lover had always wanted to start a family. Maureen loved children, but in the back of her mind was the nagging voice that her children would turn out as messed up as she was. It wasn't until Howard Jefferson, Joanne's father, took her aside one day and told her that he was proud of his daughter for falling in love with her that she stopped doubting herself.

**xx.** Maureen hated hospitals. White hallways, waiting rooms, the smell of antiseptic; it all made her feel sick to her stomach. The day that Joanne was admitted to the hospital she was so worried that she broke down and sobbed in Mark's arms. She hated hospitals more than anything. That is, until a petite nurse held up the little blue bundle that made her life worthwhile.

_

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So, that was my first RENT fic. I'm a little skeptical about it as Maureen is the character that is probably the least like myself. _

Any of these facts can be used as a promt so long as you credit and let me know in a PM. 

_Review and tell me what you think, please._


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